Article by Tim Sylvester, Founder & ED X Academy. Please help fund this team. See instructions below. And you can meet the team and ROV at the Startup Pitch Competition on April 6, 2022.

Every Sunday…

…a crew of 20 high school engineers and entrepreneurs from Hephaestus Robotics have been building Talos II, an underwater robot, at a secret makerspace in Harvey West to compete in the 21st annual MATE ROV Competition. Each year students from around the world build ROVs (underwater robots) designed to perform a series of tasks simulating real world applications - repairing underwater power lines, searching for the wreck of the Endurance, maintaining a fish farm, or planting coral. In 2021, their first year of competing, they placed 7th in their division at the World Championships! 

The team is led by Co-CEOs Andrew Sylvester and Jordan Weiss-Penzias, both juniors at Kirby School. The team includes students from Kirby, Pacific Collegiate School, Santa Cruz High, Aptos High, Los Gatos and  home school students. Each student has a role on one of the three engineering teams - hardware, software and testing - just like a Silicon Valley startup. Everyone also has a business role so they can hone entrepreneurial skills.

The students are designing the ROV using Fusion 360, assembling the electronics, writing software, building test devices, learning about buoyancy and how to manage a team. They are using a donated laser cutter to build a watertight box for the electronics out of acrylic and a 3D printer is used to create parts for the ROV.

The ROV is named after Talos, a bronze mechanical robot from Greek mythology made by Hephaestus, the god of blacksmiths. Talos is a sophisticated device with on-board Raspberry Pis, HD cameras, a tiny ethernet switch, motor controllers, an Arduino, an RC plane controller and custom Python software. Talos has six thrusters in a vectored configuration that allows the ROV to travel in four directions - up/down, forward/back, left/right and rotate horizontally. 

Like most engineering projects, Talos went through many iterations and prototypes. The first fully assembled prototype went a total of five feet on its initial test run, sunk to the bottom of the pool and the electronics chamber flooded with water. After a month of iterations,Talos was seaworthy and leak-proof.

The team has come a long way since they first started in the fall of 2020. The ten members of last year's team built Talos I in Andrew’s driveway and tested the ROV in a small above ground pool in the backyard. Neighbors out for a walk cheered on the team. One Sunday, a curious gentleman with a big grin started quizzing the students. He turned out to be Dr. Alex Wolfe, Dean of the UCSC Baskin College of Engineering, who was given a Titan of Tech award last month!

The team is sponsored by the X Academy, a Santa Cruz non-profit organization that has been offering STEM programs to students since 2014. X Academy hosts  the Santa Cruz Math Circle, a program where math professionals teach students interesting topics in math that the students don’t normally see in school. Since 2014, over 300 students from 26 schools have participated in the Santa Cruz Math Circle. When the pandemic put the Math Circle on pause, the X Academy launched the robotics program.

Now in its second year, the team has expanded to twenty members and has moved into a 1,600 sq ft Makerspace in Harvey West. The Makerspace has a new Ultimaker S5 3D printer and a used 120W CO2 laser cutter donated by a tech company in Silicon Valley. 

The X Academy was founded with the mission of bringing rich STEM programs that are readily available in Silicon Valley to students in Santa Cruz County. For example, in Santa Clara County, there are over 150 high school robotics programs. While Aptos High had an excellent robotics team that twice won first place in their division at the MATE ROV Competition World Championships, the X Academy’s robotics program is currently the only other high school robotics program in the county..

The X Academy programs are run and financially supported by a dedicated group of parents. We want to expand our programs to more students in the county and reach out to students that are traditionally underrepresented in STEM careers.  Our math program has partnered with Pajaro Valley Unified School District and the County Office of Education to reach out to Latinx students. The Math Circle involved 30% Latinx students, 40% girls and we waive tuition fees for 25% of the students. We look forward to sre-launching in Fall 2022.

Your Contributions Welcomed

We are reaching out to Santa Cruz Works members and the Santa Cruz tech community to ask for your financial support. We also need mentors, including people with experience in software,  AI, mechanical design, CAD, electronics and underwater ROVs. We also need mentors with entrepreneurial, marketing and financial experience. The students are great to work with and every week we are amazed at what they accomplish. We would be grateful for your support as well. 

If you would like to support the team or be a mentor, check out the X Academy website - www.xacademy.org or contact Tim Sylvester at tim@xacademy.org.